Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State

An unconventional faculty holds its first meeting

On this day in 1933:Black Mountain College, destined to become one of the most important breeding grounds of American art, literature, music and dance in the 20th century, holds its first faculty meeting.

The college is a Depression-era confluence of the progressive education movement in America and the Bauhaus design school in Germany, carried over by Jewish emigrants exiled by the Nazis.

It is at Black Mountain that composer John Cage will stage the first “happening,” a spontaneous reaction by a group to stimuli; Buckminster Fuller will build his first geodesic dome and choreographer Merce Cunningham will found his dance company. Among the school’s advisers: Albert Einstein and Carl Jung.

Its heyday past, Black Mountain will succumb to financial problems in 1956. Its campus is sold and becomes a boys camp.